This invention relates to the upholstered furniture industry, more particularly, a metal tack strip coated with a strip of foam used by this industry to secure upholstering material to a wood frame. Referring to FIGS. 1 and 2, there is shown by element 1 of FIG. 1, a prior art metal tack strip having a metal substrate portion 2 and a plurality of protruding members 3. Upholstering furniture craftsmen use such a tack strip 1 to engage the upholstering cloth to a furniture frame, usually made of wood, by wrapping a terminal portion of upholstering cloth around tack strip 1 with protrusions 3 extending through the cloth and then driving protrusions 3 into the appropriate wood portion of the frame. This is usually done with a hammer, which sometimes results in the metal substrate 2 cutting through the upholstering cloth, resulting in poor furniture quality. To solve this problem, it is a prior art practice to affix by hand foam rubber tape 4 to metal substrate 2. Foam tape 4 is an adhesive strip composed of a foam tape 5, removable backing 6, and an adhesive (not shown) disposed therebetween. Backing 6 is removed and foam type 5 is then adhesively affixed to the uppermost surface of substrate 2, resulting in the assembled tack strip 7 shown in FIG. 2. Attached foam tape 5 has the propensity to protect the upholstering cloth from the top edges of substrate 2 especially when element 7 is being hammered into place on a furniture frame after first being wrapped in a terminal portion of upholstering cloth.
Affixing tape 4 to tack strip 2 by hand is slow and expensive. It would be desirable to have a machine that would manufacture the tack strip assembly 7 from the metal tack strip 2 and an indefinite length of tape plus backing 4 and sever tape 4 at a point coincident with the terminal edge of metal tack strip 1. It is towards the solution of this problem that the instant invention is directed.